


thinkin bout you

by Lihgtwood



Category: The Dark Artifices Series - Cassandra Clare, The Wicked Powers Series - Cassandra Clare
Genre: Fluff, Jealous Kit, M/M, ty in a relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-02
Updated: 2020-06-02
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:28:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,110
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24504664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lihgtwood/pseuds/Lihgtwood
Summary: Tumblr prompt: jealous KitAlternatively titled, the five times that Kit finds himself asking the same question, what does he have that I don't?Kit folds his arms over the railing of the balcony. He tucks his chin into his arms, stewing about this question. He can’t find anything about Anush that proves him to be a more worthy person.
Relationships: Tiberius Blackthorn/Kit Rook
Comments: 4
Kudos: 76





	thinkin bout you

**Author's Note:**

> I've been thinkin' 'bout you  
> Do you think about me still? Do ya, do ya?
> 
> \-- Thinkin Bout You, Frank Ocean

Ty returns. Not alone, but with someone else. It doesn’t come as a surprise that he is in a relationship but there’s still a twang of pain in Kit’s chest when he wonders about the whole life that Ty has lived in the three years they’ve spent apart, a life that Kit knows nothing about and is not privy to at all. That undeniable twist of hurt as he looks at the two of them, dark figures silhouetted against the cast-iron gates of the Institute, pressed together so intimately and he finds himself wondering: what does he have that I don’t? What does Anush have that means something to Ty?

(He remembers, vividly, _there’s nothing if you aren’t there!)_

Kit folds his arms over the railing of the balcony. He tucks his chin into his arms, stewing about this question. He can’t find anything about Anush that proves him to be a more worthy person. Sure, he has a nice smile and he’s got shiny dark hair that’s slicked back and parted so neatly that there’s a pale line running through his scalp. And he’s got the Centurion imperiousness down. He walks and talks and moves like he adheres to a strict moral code and constantly has an important duty to carry out. And yeah, maybe he is tall and muscular, but since when was the universal consensus of good looks tall, dark and handsome with a good sense of hygiene? Ha – no, if anything, chicks these days were into a specific type of boy that appeared all over the Internet and those types of boys looked just slightly inclined towards griminess. Yes, the world was going through a social upheaval where the weak rose over the strong and the ugly over the good-looking, and so Kit can’t imagine why Ty would think this guy is any better than he is.

Not one thing, he scoffs.

*

Emma catches him out on the balcony. Her long, blonde hair is pinned up into a bun and a few stray hairs fall in front of her face. As sharp and honed as a knife as he remembers her to be. She grins.

“What are you doing out here?” she asks. “The rest are inside watching one of Dru’s horror movies.”

“Just thinking about stuff.”

“Wow,” she says, impressed. “Suddenly a thinker. Our next Plato. Or Socrates.”

He rolls her eyes at her. “Ha-ha.”

She comes up beside him. “What are you thinking about?”

When he refuses to tell her, she keeps knocking his arm with her own and needling him to. “I offer really good advice!”

“Coming from the girl who charged into several battlefields without a fully formed plan in mind? I think if I want to live, I’d better not follow your advice.”

She lets out a bark of laughter.

“But everything turned out fine!” She protests. At his blank face, she sighs. “Alright, fine. But I can tell from your face it’s some relationship stuff, and I think I’m pretty qualified to dispense relationship advice. I like to think my many, many failed relationships are useful for something if not very nice to reminisce on.”

“No.”

“Come on, Kit. I know all sorts of things. From giant fiery angels to llamas.”

“Curious range.”

“I take pride in it.”

He sighs, relenting. Trust Emma to be the first to annoy him into talking. “But this is just between you and me, alright?” When she nods, he continues, “Me and Anush. What does he have that I don’t?”

Realisation dawns on Emma’s face. “Aw,” she coos, pinching his cheek like a suffocating aunt. “It’s so nice to see you melancholic like this. Takes that sarcastic edge off you.”

He swats her hand away. “Hey!”

But she settles a hand beneath her chin in thought. Finally, she says, sagely, “You know, Kit. It’s not about what either of you has or doesn’t have. You don’t have to keep comparing yourself to other people. You need to be content with yourself. Self-love. You shouldn’t feel like you have to change.”

Crickets. “Huh?”

She nods like she has accomplished something great. Satisfied, she says, “I’ll leave that to sink in.” And she leaves Kit on the balcony with no more than she finds him, just with additional confusion and a bunch of words that seem to have been recited in verbatim from a Hallmark gift card.

*

After consulting Emma, who despite her curiously diverse experience, turns out to know not all that much about the affairs of the heart, he is still answerless and left floating around the Institute in a despondent lovesick haze. To make matters worse, the universe seems to conspire to rub salt into his wound. Every corner he turns, he somehow runs into the two of them. Even the act of them walking together makes his hackles rise. There’s nothing intimate in it at all, but just seeing the two of them striding up and down those hallways with Centurion purposefulness (he’s determined to use the word ‘Centurion’ as an adjective now. If it picks up steam, well, just know that he coined it.), side by side, footfalls sounding in tandem with the other, identical from the back in their dark uniforms, and he can’t help but think that it should be him. It should be him by his side. His confidante, his Watson, his madcap partner-in-crime.

He’s sitting opposite them now in the library. They’re not doing anything in particular, but the way their heads bend over the documents on the table (two dark crowns of hair, angled towards each other), the way they exchange the sheaves of documents after they’re done reading them with no need for spoken cues pulls sharply at his chest. It reminds him of the sense of conspiracy they used to share. Their impenetrable dynamic that was immune to the calls of the outside world. Two minds so finely attuned to each other, sensitive to each other’s wants and needs.

“Hello? Are you listening?” Dru waves an annoyed hand in front of his face. He snaps out of his observation of them.

“Huh?”

She throws her hands up in the air. “Obviously you don’t care about Tarantino. I knew it was suspicious when you wanted to come to the library to talk about movies. First of all, you don’t ever set foot into the library. Like ever. Second of all, why did we even come here just to talk about movies? I am so stupid. I’m leaving.”

Kit quickly pulls her down. “Sit down now,” he hisses. “And be quiet.”

The noise they make elicits a concerned glance from Ty but Kit looks away and clears his throat to attempt for some semblance at casualness.

Dru turns to follow his line of sight and lets out a sound of realization. “You’ve been using me!” He quickly hushes her before Ty can hear her.

“Yes, yes, and so what?” he demands, trying his best to muster up the remaining scraps of dignity he has but he’s sure that he’s red with shame. “Do me a favour. Please? Just this once.”

She huffs and sits back down grudgingly. “Fine. But just know that you’re a menace when you’re pining.”

“I am doing none of the sort,” he says, but it is only half-hearted. He’s too busy craning his head to try to get a glimpse of what they are reading.

“A menace, an absolute menace,” she drawls in a bored singsong, elongating the vowels. She rests her face on a hand sulkily. Anush says something and Ty smiles. Kit narrows his eyes.

“Dru.”

An annoyed sigh. “What?”

He might as well see if she has any wisdom to offer in this subject. “What does he have that I don’t?”

On seeing the gleam in her eyes, he immediately says: “No. Don’t you dare take advantage of that.”

Her eyes turn big and innocent. “I was not!”

“Forget I asked.”

“I was going to answer it seriously. You think the worst of me. Now, I was going to say that I don’t know Anush very well so I can’t really answer that question. But from the looks of it, he seems like a very nice boy who doesn’t poke fun of his younger sister figures, doesn’t lie to them, and lets them in on all his activities. Oh, and gives them his soda when they ask – ”

“I knew it, you conniving, tricky – ”

“You tricked me first when you asked me to come to the library to talk shop about movies but actually intended for it to be a cheap ploy for you to spy on my brother!” Dru folds her arms triumphantly like she won the argument. Which, she did. It’s hard to argue against her when she’s got all the hard facts out. She’s got that stubborn look in her eyes that seems to run in the family. That stubborn look he once sees in another pair of eyes – which are distinctly not that characteristic shade of blue – that he can never say no to.

Kit lets out a breath thinly through his teeth. He glares at her. “No need to shout it.”

She raises an eyebrow. “I can go louder.”

“Not if you want me to keep your secrets about Jaime.”

Dru’s mouth drops open indignantly. “You don’t know any secrets about Jaime!”

“Maybe if I was blind,” he scoffs.

“Fine,” she grumbles. She returns his glare. “But just know you’re on thin ice.”

They shake on it. Dru isn’t any better than him and she knows it. They feel like two underhanded criminals, equally complicit in being lovelorn fools, settling on a truce to keep it under wraps.

“Wipe that smug smile off your face, Rook. Or I’ll go balls to the wall and scream out your confession of love. I’m sure Jaime can deal with a stupid, lovesick confession from a sixteen year old, we’re all stupid at this age, but I wonder how my brother will find you.”

Kit holds his hands up in surrender. “Hey, hey, I’m not doing anything. Geez, has anyone told you that for someone so young, you’re surprisingly full of bloodlust?”

Dru shrugs. “It’s a teenage girl thing.”

*

During her afternoon naptime, Kit rocks Mina in her cradle gently, watching the way her tiny fingers curl around a rattle. Jem and Tessa gave him instructions to watch over Mina for a short while while they attended a meeting with the Clave people so they’re in his room now. Before Mina, Kit never spent time with younger children. He doesn’t know how to talk to them, what they like, what they don’t like, so even now whenever Jem and Tessa entrust her to him, he still feels a sense of apprehension. Me? he thinks. You would trust me with your daughter? It doesn't quite seem right. Kit doesn’t even fully trust himself sometimes, has always thought of himself as wholly unreliable and incompetent for the job. And there was also the issue of him being an outsider, an intruder encroaching on this family, so who was he to take care of her? What right did he have? He – he didn’t even know how to baby talk! At the time, Kit panicked and freaked out. But Jem placed both his hands on Kit’s shoulders and told him firmly in that mild voice of his, that always forgiving voice, Kit. You’re the gentlest person I’ve seen with her. I’m sure you’ll do just fine.

Kit strokes her cheek with his knuckle, afraid to hurt her. Baby skin is so soft and smooth that Kit fears that if he handles her too roughly she might just break. “Go to sleep,” he tells her.

She is decidedly very awake.

“Nap time,” he wheedles in his most convincing voice. “Go to sleep.”

An excitable gurgle.

“You know, Min-Min, you are so blessed to be a baby and not have to think about anything. The money I would give to be in your position now.”

She watches him curiously with big eyes.

“You don’t have to think about anything. Not about whether you are tall, dark and handsome. Or whether you can match up to your rivals in love.”

She gurgles. “Lah-b.”

“Nice try, but you’re leaning into the ‘b’ sound. It’s more of a rounded sound that comes from the back of your mouth. Try pressing your tongue up against your pallet.”

“Lah-b.”

“Nevermind, you’re excused. You’re two.” Kit sighs. “Mina.”

Mina makes a sound that approaches assent, but it may just be a burp.

“What does he have that I don’t?”

Mina blubbers something out with the tenacity of someone who really wants to get their point across, but unfortunately she’s two and she’s saying nothing that makes sense. It’s a lot of saliva bubbles and drool trickling down the side of her mouth.

Kit smiles at her fondly and uses the edge of her bib to wipe her mouth. “What did you say? An ability to communicate honestly, a lack of self-deprecation, a lack of offbeat humour and dark, shiny hair that could be used in a Pantene commercial? My, my. You’re more shrewd than you look, Mina.”

She beams up at him like she can somehow understand what he’s saying.

“Go to sleep,” he tells her gently. He continues rocking her back and forth until she closes her eyes.

*

Livvy appears to him in the training room so suddenly that he releases his dagger earlier than he should. The throwing knife flies from his hands and misses the target entirely. It crashes into the wall and clatters to the ground.

“A little warning?” Kit bristles, shaking his arm out.

Livvy gives him a small apologetic smile. She is shimmery and diaphanous, outlined in silver. “Sorry. I’m still not used to this body.”

“Where’s your brother?”

Just to be annoying, she says, “Which brother? I have four.”

Kit rolls his eyes at her.

“Okay, he’s in the reading room with Anush sorting out some Centurion business.” On seeing the face that he makes, her eyebrows rise in amusement. “What? What’s your problem with him?”

“Oh, nothing,” Kit mutters, going to pick up the next knife from the basket. He’s very aware that he’s behaving like a sullen bastard by going around and roping people into his unhappy pining but he can’t help it. It’s the only thing going through his mind these days. Every touch between them sends him bristling and every smile they share during dinnertime makes him sink lower into his seat. Anush’s hand slides over Ty’s and Kit stabs a circle of carrot on the tines of his fork viciously.

“No, it’s not,” Livvy says, sounding amused. “You’re moping. Don’t think I haven’t noticed.”

“Alright, fine,” Kit admits sourly, past the point of caring. “Busted. But I don’t understand what’s so great about him.”

“Anush?” Livvy says. “There’s plenty good about him. He’s a very nice boy.”

Kit waits. “And?”

“And he cares about Ty.”

Kit makes a noise of frustration. So do I, he wants to say. More than anything else.

Hearing about Anush through Livvy makes Kit feel like he’s not the tall, dark and handsome supermodel and all-rounded human being that Kit has inflated him to be in his head. These aren’t sky-high standards. Anyone can be nice, and it’s not like caring for Ty is such an unattainable and difficult thing to do. Ty is someone who is easy to care for. There’s something so endearing about him that makes you want to put his welfare over yours. His startling honesty compels you to be honest. The rarity of his smiles makes you want to keep wringing it from him over and over just to see its sweetness. The shyness with which he ducks his head when suddenly disarmed by one of Kit’s jokes, the way that he bites his lip sometimes to suppress the full spread of a smile makes Kit want to take his chin, brush his thumb over that pink bottom lip and –

“And?” When Livvy looks at him strangely, he sighs. “I just don’t understand. Tell me, Livvy. What does he have that I don’t?”

Livvy’s eyes are filled with amusement. “You’re really asking me that.”

“I am,” Kit says, defensively.

A cryptic smile curves around Livvy’s mouth. “Apples and oranges. I can’t compare the two of you.”

“Oh, please don’t be another Emma. She told me to practice self-love but self-love won’t help me.”

“Well, she’s right.”

“Okay, but let’s drop the emotional awareness and healthy advice and just for a minute, entertain my childishness. So what does he have that I don’t? Why did Ty choose him over me?”

She floats nearer to him. Kit has the feeling that if she was not a ghost, she would take both his hands into hers, but now she just hovers where she is, inches away from him, looking at him with a knowing twinkle in her eyes.

“Kit,” she says slowly – a lot of people seem to be doing that nowadays. They speak to him slowly and gently like they’re educating a small child, every word brimming with meaning, as if he has severely misunderstood something. “My brother misses you a lot. He won’t admit it but he does. And you can trust what I say because I’ve spent every single day for three years hovering over his shoulder, watching him write letters that he won’t send. I think you should talk to him. Really, you should. I think it will do some good.”

“Alright,” Kit says, not really certain what else to say to that.

“Good,” Livvy says. She offers him one last smile before she leaves him to his training, but at this point he is in no mood to train. Knife after knife plunks sadly to the ground after he continuously misses the board. Soon after, he gives up and goes for a shower.

*

After he showers, he wanders around the Institute to find that his feet bring him to the living room. It is nighttime already and it is dark out. The room is sparsely lit. Kit sits himself down in front of the Institute piano and, his heart still heavy with Livvy’s words, plinks out a few troubled keys. What he gets is a half-hearted, discordant tune. He sighs. Back in Devon, Jem encouraged him to pick up the piano, what with it being a Herondale trait and there being a need to preserve such ancestral legacies, and Kit has tried but he never really was musical. He is much more the kind of person who appreciates a good trick up the sleeve, the careful sleight of hand, and the heady flush of victory. He doesn’t really have room for the slow and long-drawn passion of music, where he must keep count to the steady beat meted out by the metronome or else the whole tune will be thrown off. Tick-tock. He is far too restless for that. Far too flight-ready and fickle.

“Never took you for a musical person.”

Kit smiles. He doesn't have to look up to know who it is. His eyes are still focused on the black and white keys. “I’m just trying it out.”

Ty walks up to him to watch him play a few more pathetic notes. “Did you learn any songs?”

“One. Not sure if you know it though. It’s a bit esoteric, a bit highbrow, if you ask me.”

“What is it called?”

“Baa-baa,” Kit says. Then at Ty’s face, he clarifies, “The black sheep.”

“You know that wasn’t what I was making that face at,” Ty says but there’s a humoured lilt to his voice that makes Kit’s heart soar a little. Ty makes a small gesture that Kit understands. He slides further down the piano seat to make space for Ty and Ty settles down beside him. Like this, he can feel his warmth. The stiff, bleached material of the Centurion uniform brushes his bare arm, sending tingles running through him. There is no time to register all this, to fully take in the fact that this is the first time since they return that they are so close together, or to mitigate the implacable feeling of longing in his heart that he has spent years shoving down, before Ty starts to play. He plays beautifully. His fingers are long and slender and pale, looking like creatures themselves, imbued with their own life, travelling up and down the keys with such aching elegance that Kit cannot take their eyes off them. The tune is complex, something Kit can only dream of playing. His lips are pursed in concentration. His eyes are dark and lowered. Kit can feel the longing in his chest start to spill over, like a full to brimming cup.

Then Ty says something that jars him.

“I hear you’ve been making your rounds. Asking everybody a question.”

Kit freezes. He’s not sure what to say. He can feel the hot flush of shame creeping up his neck.

“So,” he hazards. “What do you think?”

“What do I think?” Ty echoes. There is no indication of anger or upset on his face. He continues playing. “Brie,” he replies.

“What?”

“Brie. My answer is Brie. You’ve been asking everyone which cheese they think is the best cheese, haven’t you? I asked Dru to tell me.”

Kit can fall off his seat with relief. So Dru kept to their agreement after all. That twerp. He makes a mental note to thank her profusely and lets out a breathless laugh.

“Oh. Yeah, of course,” Kit says, unable to wipe the smile from his face. “Unfortunately for you, I am a Gouda proponent. All hail Gouda. Gouda 2020.”

Ty slants a bewildered look at him. “Alright. I mean, I’m not one to have such strong opinions on cheese. I didn’t know you were so into cheese either.”

“Devon,” is all Kit says as a means of explanation. He nods solemnly. “It’s a Brit thing. The Brits – love it. Ask any Brit.”

“Is that so?” For a second Ty looks completely sincere, but then he whacks Kit lightly on the arm, earning a surprised yelp from Kit. “You’re fooling with me.”

“I am not!” Kit cries. “Ask Jem. He’s crazy about Camembert. It’s the opium of Britain.”

“Britain already had an opium trade,” Ty retorts. “It can’t be the opium of Britain if opium already existed there.”

“Oh, really. I didn’t know you were the authority on English sayings.”

They bicker like that for a few minutes more, the tune completely forgotten, the chasm of time and distance separating them lost as well in their playful arguing. For a moment, it feels like they both forget that it has been three years since they last see each other, and they haven’t lived complete lives outside of the other. Everything swallowed up in this fragile moment. Darkly lit room, night sky. The silent tomes resting in the shadows on shelves their only witnesses. Kit says something and Ty smiles. Those smiles that Kit commits to his memory and stores for another time to reminisce on, smiles which he keeps like medals, prized and hard-earned. And he feels something come to life in his chest, slowly becoming fully-fledged, growing its own set of wings and just pushing itself up over the base of his throat when someone calls for Ty.

The full-bodied smile spanning Ty’s lips dims a little. The words that are about to leap off Kit’s tongue sink down to their depths. Just like that, they remember again.

“I have to go,” Ty says.

Kit gives him a rueful smile. “Then go.”

Sparing Kit just one last look, Ty gets up from the piano seat and goes over to where Anush is. The two of them walk away, leaving Kit by himself at the piano, trying to play an instrument he doesn’t know how to. Under a different pair of hands, it no longer produces the same baroque, whimsical tune. It’s back to a few disparate, unhappy plinks.

_What does he have that I don’t?_ Kit finds himself returning to this, still empty-handed after a long day of asking people and has since abandoned his questioning. The space on the seat beside him is still warm with Ty. And he remembers the feeling of sitting there with him, how they felt like two cogs brought together to form a new machine, aligning to each other with such seamlessness. Workable on their own but formidable when brought together. That spark that illuminated their early crime-fighting days. And for some reason, something tells him that that question doesn't need an answer.

**Author's Note:**

> i roast eboys any chance i get
> 
> reposted from tumblr
> 
> tumblr @ christopherslightwood
> 
> likes and comments appreciated!


End file.
